iddlers and put
the French to the rout.

In the War of Succession Lerida was again besieged by the French, who
behaved with great treachery and cruelly sacked the town after
capitulation. Retaliation came in 1710, when Stanhope routed Philip V.
at Almenara. The French fled before the English bayonets, and Philip
himself, in these early days of his long reign, nearly lost his life. He
would have been spared many troubles.

A little later on, in 1810, during the Peninsular War, it was taken by
Suchet, and the inhabitants men, women and children were so cruelly
treated that the governor, unable to bear the sight of so much
suffering, capitulated. Since then Lerida has enjoyed more or less
tranquil days. She would now hardly be thought worth taking.

It was during some of these troublous times, in 1707, that her beautiful
cathedral was desecrated, and remains to this day a prominent
illustration of the barbarities of war. It towers 300 feet above the
town, a magnificent outline against the clear blue sky. The first church
existed here as far back as the sixth century. This in time gave place
to the present church, of which the first stone was laid by Pedro II. in
1203. It is one of the finest specimens in Europe of the early-pointed
style and its desecration was a world's regret. Nevertheless, its style
is a little contradictory, for the windows are for the most part
round-headed.

Perched on the summit of an almost perpendicular rock, it looks even
higher and larger than it really is. Its fine octagonal steeple stands
out a bold and conspicuous object over many a mile of plain and
country. As the sun declines, its shadow falls upon the houses of the
town sleeping below, and creeps over the surface of the river. Near it
is a building now used as a powder magazine, but in the Middle Ages was
a palace given up to the rude scenes of splendour of which those days
were typical, and before that it had been a Moorish castle and a
Christian temple. Its walls have defied the centuries, but nothing is
left of its Moorish beauty and refinement.

In 1707 the French turned the great church into a fortress, and it was
never restored to its sacred uses. Peace fell upon Lerida, but the fat
old canons had learned to shirk the steep climbing of the rocks in all
seasons and all weathers. They agitated for a new cathedral within the
town, and had their wish. A hideous Corinthian building arose, and the
magnificent church upon the hill af